"Blaming climate change for these disasters only deflects attention away from actual causes."

"First, understand Southern California is naturally dry. Its Mediterranean climate means it rarely rains in the summer and has a limited winter rainy season. Three deserts in the region attest to its dry climate. ...
    "While climate alarmists like Michael Mann blame the fires on global warming, December dryness is not unusual. In fact, the January 9th fires were preceded by a 30-day trend of increasing rainfall, but that obviously was not a factor. ... Furthermore, the winter rainy season coincides with the time of the Santa Ana winds ... the winds warm and dry further, typically with a relative humidity below 10% that rapidly dries out the vegetation. ...
    "The region’s last big fire – the December 2017 Thomas Fire – was ignited when Santa Ana winds caused electrical wires to spark.
    "Knowing that natural, lethal fire dangers are always looming for the growing population, the question is whether city and state governments could have been better prepared to minimize ignitions and more efficiently contain a fire’s spread ...
    "Climate alarmists like Michael Mann claim it is the increase of CO2 causing drier conditions that correlates with bigger fires. But the data do not support his fearmongering.
    "An increase in the destruction of property by wildfires better correlates with population growth and the expansion of an electrical grid that is vulnerable to high winds. Increased 1-hour fuels and 10-hour fuels due to land disturbances and poor land management correlate with bigger fires. Increased homeless populations correlates with more ignitions.
    "Blaming climate change for these disasters only deflects attention away from actual causes. Fabrications linking rising CO2 to wildfires should be ignored. Governments must [allow] solutions that will truly protect people and their property from the unstoppable, natural conditions enabling devastating fires."

~ James Steele from his article 'Assigning Responsibility for the Tragic Los Angeles Fires'

"The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management."

"The solution to dangerous, out-of-control wildfires in California is addressing the root cause: 'excess fuel load' from bad forest management. Focusing on climate change, a minor variable that we 'have no near-term control over, is a craven political ploy. ...
    [T]emperatures have risen 1 degree C in the last 150 years. Is it really possible that that amount of warming makes dangerous wildfires inevitable? No. ... The negative effect of rising global temperatures on California wildfire susceptibility in particular is dubious because past centuries had far more fire-prone climates. The Palmer Drought Index shows only a slight increase in California drought since 1900.
    "Historical evidence shows us that prior to man-made CO2 emissions CA experienced regular 'megadroughts' that could last over a century. The modern era has been very lush by comparison. Even if CA could lower global CO2 levels we could easily suffer a regional drought. ...
    "The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management. Policymakers have prevented controlled burns, debris clearing, and logging — jacking up the 'fuel load' to incredibly dangerous levels. ... The path forward is simple: focus on the main cause, forest management, which is totally within our control. Stop pretending that lowering CO2 levels would bring about some fire-free paradise–and that it is possible near-term. Stop mandating 'unreliables.' Decriminalise nuclear."

~ Alex Epstein from his post 'Bad Forest Management, and Not Climate Change, is the Root Cause of California Fires'

'Hurricanes Are Not Going Away; We Must Double Down on What’s Making Them More Survivable'

"Storms like Helene and Milton [and cyclones like Gabrielle] ought to drive us to recommit to and expand the very institutions that have made natural disasters more survivable for so many, not to abandon them out of some false hope that bad weather can be eliminated. ...
    "A world without dangerous weather is an imaginary ideal. Press even the most ardent climate activists, and they’ll admit as much. ... But a world with marginally better weather would still have hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, and all the other maladies we’re so often led to believe only plague us because we burn fossil fuels. So, if we’re serious about tackling the problems caused by dangerous storms and other natural disasters, the solution lies in better adapting to bad weather, not pretending we can eliminate it.
    "Fortunately, humans are very good at adapting to bad weather. And, while we have been for most of our history, we have become incredibly good at it in the last two hundred years thanks primarily to one thing—the economic growth that resulted from the Industrial Revolution.
    "Economic growth is not just some metric for measuring business activity. It reflects the creation of the wealth that has allowed humans to not only survive but live comfortably in nearly every region on earth. Thanks to a robust energy industry and modern HVAC systems, there are bustling cities all the way from arid deserts to the frigid taiga. ...
    "This is all to say that the problems often ascribed to climate change are fundamentally problems of poverty.
    "Fortunately, we already know what solves poverty: market institutions grounded in a private property norm. Unfortunately, those are the very institutions the so-called environmentalist movement has set its sights on."

~  Connor O'Keefe from his post 'Hurricanes Are Not Going Away; We Must Double Down on What’s Making Them More Survivable'

Minisinformation, green gloating, and apocalypse porn

"Remember when a flood was just a flood? A watery calamity that might make roads impassable, homes unliveable and sometimes, in the worst cases, claim lives? Not anymore. Now it’s always a deluge, an apocalypse, a portent of the horrors to come if mankind keeps on sinfully heating the planet. Now a flood is always a lesson from on high – from a ticked-off Poseidon, presumably – warning hubristic humans to ‘reduce carbon emissions.’ Floods are our fault now, like everything else.
    "This neo-Biblical view of floods, this pre-modern belief that gushing waters are divine wrath for human misbehaviour, was much in evidence following the flooding of New York City on Friday....
    "The flooding was bad, there’s no question about that. ... [But t]here’s been a nauseating streak of apocalypse porn in the chatter about New York’s floods.... Hacks have been trying to outdo each other in the hyperbole stakes. ... With dire predictability, Friday’s flooding has been blamed on climate change – which is to say on that pesky, polluting modernity created by mankind. ... we must [they howl] ‘reduce carbon emissions and stop the ongoing heating of the planet’ or else these violent visitations from Mother Nature will ‘become more extreme’ ... In short, appease the weather gods, offer up industrial society as a sacrifice, and maybe they’ll leave us alone. ...
    "There is something distinctly medieval in this view of extreme weather as nature’s rage with mankind. You see it all the time. In response to wildfires in Australia, heatwaves in Europe, big storms in the US, the same cry goes up: we’re being punished for our eco-crimes. ...
    "It is a testament to the creeping irrationalism in chattering-class circles that every weather event is now interpreted as a ‘sign,’ a species of heavenly punishment. Like pre-modern peasants, who at least had the excuse of having never heard of science, they’re incapable of shrugging off rain or heat or wind as perfectly normal events. No, they’re rebukes, lessons, all providing ‘a glimpse of the possible winter world we’ll inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out.’
    "The idea that weather is turning more violent, and that it’s all down to climate change, is essentially misinformation. As Bjorn Lomborg points out, ever-fewer people are dying in natural disasters. Even as the human population has quadrupled over the past hundred years, deaths from climate calamity have dropped 20-fold. The risk of a human dying in one of nature’s catastrophes has fallen by 99 per cent since the 1920s. Modernity isn’t taking lives – it’s saving them.
    "Which is why we need more of it, not less."

~ Brendan O'Neill, from his column 'Stop this green gloating over New York’s floods: Friday’s flooding was bad, but it was not an eco-apocalypse'

"Get [published in] a top climate publication - but only if you scare people"

"Last week, I described our paper on climate change and wildfires. I am very proud of this research overall. But I want to talk about how moulding research presentations for high-profile journals can reduce its usefulness & actually mislead the public....
    "I mentioned that this research looked at the effect of warming in isolation but that warming is just one of many important influences on wildfires with others being changes in human ignition patterns and changes in vegetation/fuels.
    "So why didn’t I include these obviously relevant factors in my research from the outset? Why did I focus exclusively on the impact of climate change? Put simply, I've found that there is a formula for success for publishing climate change research in the most prestigious and widely-read scientific journals and unfortunately this formula also makes the research less useful.
    "1) The first thing to know is that simply *showing* that climate change impacts something of value is usually sufficient, and it is not typically necessary to show that the impact is large compared to other relevant influences....
    "This type of framing, where the influence of climate change is unrealistically considered in isolation, is the norm for high-profile research papers. For example, in another recent influential 'Nature' paper, they calculated that the two largest climate change impacts on society are deaths related to extreme heat and damage to agriculture.
    "However, that paper does not mention that climate change is not the dominant driver for either one of these impacts: temperature-related deaths have been declining, and agricultural yields have been increasing for decades despite climate change....
    "3) A third element of a high-profile climate change research paper is to focus on metrics that are not necessarily the most illuminating or relevant but serve more to generate impressive numbers.... The sacrifice of clarity for the sake of more impressive numbers was probably necessary for it to get into 'Nature' [magazine]....
    "So why did I follow this formula for producing a high-profile scientific research paper if I don’t believe it creates the most useful knowledge for society? I did it because I began this research as a new assistant professor facing pressure to establish myself in a new field and to maximize my prospects of securing respect from my peers, future funding, tenure, and ultimately a successful career. To put it bluntly, I sacrificed value added for society in order to mold the presentation of the research to be compatible with the preferred narratives of the editors and reviewers of high-profile journals.
    "I am bringing these issue to light because I hope that highlighting them will push for reforms that will better align the incentives of researchers with the production of the most useful knowledge for society."

~ climate scientist Patrick T. Brown explaining his modus on this Twitter thread. He writes more about it here: 'I Left Out the Full Truth to Get My Climate Change Paper Published,' and offers more thoughts on his blog: 'The Not-so-Secret Formula for Publishing a High-Profile Climate Change Research Paper.'

RELATED, from Bryan Caplan, 'Tenure Is a Total Scam: A tenured professor plays whistleblower': 

"I’m a tenured professor. In normal English, that means I have a dream job for life. Which is even more fantastic than it sounds. 'Fantastic,' that is, for we tenured professors. From the viewpoint of the taxpayers and donors who subsidize us, however, this system is a total scam. An outrage. A travesty.

    "Dear reader, I propose to give you a guided tour of the tenure system: How you get tenure, what tenure means in practice, and the laughable efforts of the professoriat to defend this affront to the word 'job' ...."

It's all about the "narrative," not about the science.

In the beginning, it was simply "global warming." Then, when the 1988-2013 Pause proved that title insufficiently accurate, it became "climate change." But as that was insufficiently frightening it quickly became a "climate crisis," then a "climate emergency," and now ... "global boiling":

"‘The era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived’, decreed UN chief António Guterreslast week. It’s hard to know what’s worse: the hubris and arrogance of this globalist official who imagines he has the right to declare the start of an entire new age, or the servile compliance of the media elites who lapped up his deranged edict about the coming heat death of Earth....
    "Guterres issued his neo-papal bull about the boiling of our world in response to [recent] heatwaves that have hit some countries ... ‘Climate change is here [and] it is terrifying’, he said. We see ‘families running from the flames [and] workers collapsing in scorching heat’ and ‘it is just the beginning’, he said, doing his best impersonation of a 1st-century millenarian crackpot. In fact, forget ‘climate change’, he said. Forget ‘global warming’, too. What we’re witnessing is a boiling. It all brings to mind the Bible's Book of Job which warned that the serpent Leviathan would cause the seas to ‘boil like a cauldron’. Leviathan’s back, only we call him climate change now....
    "Let’s be clear: ‘global boiling’ is not a factual or scientific phrase. Rather, it represents yet another ramping up of the green politics of fear. It’s the latest addition to the already fat dictionary of eco-dread. Economic inflation isn’t the only problem we face today – there’s threat inflation, too. The catastrophism of climate change in particular is puffed up on pretty much a weekly basis. This is why we’ve gone from climate change to climate crisis to climate emergency. And it’s why we’re now going from global warming to global boiling. Language is used to terrorise the masses, to snap us out of our supposed apathetic coolness on the issue of climate change and force us to agree with the cranky elites that the end really is nigh, and it’s our fault....

"They’re lying to us. Forget global boiling ... Forget global warming, even. It’s global gaslighting we should be worried about. If gaslighting, in the words of the Oxford Dictionary, is ‘the process of making somebody believe untrue things in order to control them’, then that lunatic Evening Standard cover [asking 'Who Will Stop earth Burning'] was classic gaslighting. The planet is not on fire. Earth is not burning. These are untruths. This is delirium, not journalism; fearmongering, not fact-gathering. And the aim, it seems to me, is to try to control us; to frighten us with pseudo-Biblical prophesies of hellfire and doom until we obediently bow down to the eco-ideology....
    "The more pressing point is this: no one needs to stop Earth from burning because Earth isn’t burning. You can’t put out a fire that doesn’t exist. As Bjorn Lomborg said last week, the idea that the ‘world is ablaze’ is pure bunkum....
    "Heat has always been with us. What’s different today is our apocalyptic interpretation of heat as Gaia’s violent punishment of flying, driving, shopping, eating, polluting, horrible mankind. It isn’t the weather that’s changed so much as our willingness to see weather as a reprimand by the gods for our exploitation of nature’s resources....
    "[B]eing told that humans are a plague on the planet – when in truth life expectancy has risen and deaths from natural disasters have plummeted in accordance with industrial breakthroughs – I know misanthropy is at play more than calm, honest fact-gathering."

~ Brendan O'Neill, composite quote from his posts 'Global boiling? Don’t be ridiculous' and 'The real crisis is global gaslighting' 

"The IPCC's heralded Synthesis Report ... is like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine."

Climate-related disaster deaths
[Source: see Note 1]

"The IPCC's heralded Synthesis Report [the culmination of its lengthy 6th 'Assessment Cycle' of reports] is supposed to accurately synthesise the best information about human beings' climate impacts in order to rationally guide policy.
    "Instead, it severely distorts science to advance a corrupt political agenda....
    "A proper climate synthesis report must cover 2 key issues:

1. An even-handed (covering minuses and pluses) and precise account of our climate impacts.
2. An account of our ability to master climate danger, including the use of fossil fuel to neutralise its own negative climate impacts....

    "I recommend just skimming the IPCC Synthesis Report, linked below—this report that is supposed to be so brilliant—and just ask yourself if it is remotely even-handed about human impact on climate, or if it accounts for our mastery of climate. (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_LongerReport.pdf )
    "Instead of an even-handed and precise account of our climate impacts, the IPCC SR gives us a blatantly biased view of exaggerated negative impacts, with no mention of positives like global greening thanks to CO2 fertilisation of the atmosphere or decreasing cold-related deaths.
    "Instead of accounting for our climate mastery ability, the IPCC SR ignores our ability to neutralise negative climate impacts, despite the fact that we've driven climate disaster deaths down by 98%over the last century!
    "This is like a polio report omitting the polio vaccine."

~ Alex Epstein and Stephen Henne, from their lengthy analysis of the IPCC Synthesis Report titled 'The IPCC's Perversion on Science'

Food supply per person per day (calories)
Source: See Note 2

Note 1: UC San Diego - The Keeling Curve
    For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 in per year during the 2010s.
    Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).
    Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.
Note 2: HumanProgress - Food supply, per person, per day

No, CO2 does not drive disasters

 

There's something nasty in the way warmists gloat whenever there's a natural disaster -- a bushfire, a hurricane, a flood -- something evil in the glee which these disasters are reported, always with a link to 'global warming, almost alway revelling in the human tragedy as a 'payback' for our comfortable lifestyles driven by high energy use.

No surprise to hear that these ghouls are also fantasists. On top of similar studies elsewhere comes three from Australia, affirming ...

... there has been no significant change in natural disasters, precipitation, or bushfire across Australia for the last several decades.
    “Here we utilise an Australian natural disaster database of normalised insurance losses to show compound disasters are responsible for the highest seasonal financial losses. … There has been no temporal trend in their frequency since 1966.
    "The predominant and most predictable driver of climate-related disaster events is not anthropogenic global warming, or CO2 emissions, but the El Niño Southern Oscillation."

No wonder, really, because how could a one degree rise in 150 years possibly cause any such acceleration of disaster on the scale regularly claimed by warmists.

No, our planet is not totally safe. It has always delivered natural disasters, situations which are beyond our ability to cope. But rather than take this already unsafe planet and make it more unsafe, our abundant use of energy takes this unsafe planet and makes it safer. The more energy we have, the less we have to fear.

Especially comforting news when you know the rate of disasters aren't increasing. And won't be.

"On average bushfires burn an amazing 50 million ha every year in Australia"

Mean annual area burned in Australia, Source Giglio et al 2013 (from Jo Nova)

"File this fact away: Satellite datasets show that in an average year 50 million hectares burn around Australia. In a quiet year, it’s only 20 million hectares, but in a busy year, it gets close to 100 million hectares. A lot of this land area is in the far north and western part of the continent, which is hot and often arid. It’s not the same as the cool wet corner of South-East Australia which has some of the tallest trees in the world. The fuel loads in the north are much lower (like the trees). Some parts of the top end burn nearly 100%, year after year.
     "So far this season the fires that gained so much attention around the world have burned around 10 million hectares, which is only a fifth of the usual area burnt... It’s no accident that the awful devastation this year was not in the red hot fire zone on the map above, but in the South-East corner where less than 5% of the area burns each year. The rarely burnt is the risky zone where there is a 20-year build-up of fuel..."

~ Jo Nova from her post 'On average bushfires burn an amazing 50 million ha every year in Australia'

. 

"Greta Thunberg's use of the words 'don't act' is very misleading. What she is actually urging is not action, but government action intended to stop private action." Bonus #QotD

"[Greta Thunberg's] use of the words 'don't act' is very misleading. What [s]he is urging when [s]he speaks of 'action' is a mass of laws and decrees — i.e., government action. This government action will forcibly prevent hundreds of millions, indeed, billions of individual human beings from engaging in their, personal and business private action — that is, from acting in ways that they judge to serve their own self-interests. Thus, what [s]he is actually urging is not action, but government action intended to stop private action."

~ George Reisman, paraphrased from his 2006 post on 'Britain's Stern Review on Global Warming'
.

UPDATE 1: School climate strikers should answer these two questions:

Any headteacher who values his or her pupils’ education will not turn a blind eye to today’s absences, still less join the kids for a march, as some are reported to be doing.
They will keep them behind after school and set them two essays to research and write. The first should answer the question: “Does scientific evidence support the notion that ‘the Earth is dying’?” As for resources to answer that question, I point them towards the latest IPCC report as well as the data sources which feed into it. That would include Nasa data on sea ice in the Arctic, which shows a sharp retreat in recent decades, as well as satellite data from the same organisation on wildfires – which shows a fall in the acreages burned in recent decades. They might also like to look at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organisation’s report on hurricanes which last month concluded: “it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity”.
    Essay number two should be on the question: “What would it mean for the global economy if governments really did eliminate all carbon emissions by 2025?” Given that this is the central demand of many of the climate strikers, this is a rather pertinent question...

UPDATE 2: A helpful reality check appeared at Bjorn Lomborg's Facebook page, using data from the International Disasters Database:

.

"Skeptics think we should stop firestorms by reducing fuel loads, and clearing firebreaks. Unskeptical scientists on the other hand are talking about going vegan, swapping light globes, installing windmills and photovoltaic panels and of course…. planting more trees. Oh the dilemma? Should we stop fires with firebreaks or wave some solar panels?" #QotD

Jo Nova writing on the reaction to the Australian bushfires from climate scientologists, asks How Many Fires Can Australia Stop with Solar Panels & Windfarms:

"As some fires rage, parts of the nation are gripped with witchcraft.
    "Skeptics think we should stop firestorms by reducing fuel loads, and clearing firebreaks. Unskeptical scientists on the other hand are talking about going vegan, swapping light globes, installing windmills and photovoltaic panels and of course…. planting more trees. Oh the dilemma? Should we stop fires with firebreaks or wave some solar panels? ...
    "What will it take for us to wake up to the Science Crisis? Somehow it had never occurred to [warmists] that rainforests can burn. What are our universities teaching?
Five kilometers away from the disastrous fires [at Binna Burra] is Numinbah, where there is no trend at all in rainfall ... 

    "This is the reality of climate change:

…

    "The only trend that’s meaningful in fires is that 67 years of fire management in the hot, dry state of WA shows the more prescribed area that we burn, the less that wildfire does."

The One Statistic Climate Catastrophists Don’t Want You to Know

Guest post by Alex Epstein

Alex Epstein’s much-anticipated book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels has now been released by Penguin. Climate scientist Patrick Michaels reviewed it as, “simply the best popular-market book about climate, environmental policy, and energy that I have read.  Laymen and experts alike will be boggled by Epstein’s clarity.”
   “By explicitly holding human life as his standard of value, “ says reviewer Erin Connors, “Epstein argues that what makes the industry virtuous is its ability to improve the life of human beings. While other books may offer a defence of the industry by pointing to economic or political benefits, Epstein goes on offense and shows that the fossil fuel industry is actually good.”
    “We—the men and women in the fossil fuel industry—promote human flourishing.”
Here’s a small sample.

---

If you ever get asked the vague but morally-charged question “Do you believe in climate change?” someone is trying to put something over on you.

Climate change is a constant of nature and everyone agrees that fossil fuels have some impact on our naturally variable, volatile, and often vicious climate.

The question is whether change will have a catastrophic impact—one so bad it justifies restricting the only practical way to get energy in the foreseeable future to the 3 billion people who have next to none of it: fossil fuels. (No country relies on the sun and wind for energy, but rich countries can afford to pay tens or hundreds of billions to install and accommodate allegedly virtuous wind turbines and solar panels on their grids.)

The real issue is climate catastrophe. I’m not a climate-change sceptic. I’m a climate catastrophe sceptic—and here’s one graph that shows why you should be, too…

What the U.S. National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You

Everyone’s favourite leftie blogger at No Right Turn has breathlessly announced “the US government has released its National Climate Assessment, confirming that climate change is a clear and present danger to the United States.” Since he’s brought the White House’s paid assessment into the local blogosphere, allow to offer in response this Guest Post by climate scientists Patrick Michaels and Chip Kappenberger.

What the National Climate Assessment Doesn’t Tell You

The Obama Administration this week is set to release [and now has – Ed.] the latest version of the National Climate Assessment—a report which is supposed to detail the potential impacts that climate change will have on the United States.  The report overly focuses on the supposed negative impacts from climate change while largely dismissing or ignoring the positives from climate change.

The bias in the National Climate Assessment towards pessimism (which we have previously detailed here) has implications throughout the US federal regulatory process because the National Climate Assessment is cited (either directly or indirectly) as a primary source for the science of climate change for justifying federal regulation aimed towards mitigating greenhouse gas emissions [and by politicians here in NZ for similar reasons – Ed.]. Since the National Climate Assessment gets it wrong, so does everyone else.

This is What Political Science Looks Like

Students of Political Science might care to look at how science is done in the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose recently released “scientific report” is filled with predictions of gloom and doom put there by … whom? Read on to see how, and by whom, those all important “summaries of the scientific consensus” are written. It might surprise you:

Understanding The 97% Consensus
It turns out that 97% of IPCC scientists are actually government officials.

        Prof Stavins, Harvard’s Professor of Business and Government, was one of two ‘coordinating lead authors’ of a key report published by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) earlier this month.
    Prof Stavins told The Mail on Sunday yesterday that he had been especially concerned by what happened at a special ‘contact group’. He was one of only two scientists present, surrounded by ‘45 or 50’ government officials.
    Three quarters of the original version of the document ended up being deleted.

This certainly gives the term “PolSci” a new meaning. Because that Summary document is important:

A new religion is causing today’s downward spiral

In his oft-quoted tome on the history of ancient Rome, Edward Gibbon identified the rise of Christianity as a key factor in the fall of empire--degrading it’s martial readiness just as the barbarians approached the gates. Doug Casey wonders if today’s west might be going the same way.

Casey identifies a new religion—environmentalism—as playing a similar role in the downward spiral of the United States, as well as many of the large democracies. In this Guest Post, David Galland from Casey Research summarises Doug Casey’s argument.

In a nutshell, in the same way that the early Christians—adherents to a much more passive form of the religion than today's "Kill them all and let God sort them out" version—degraded the martial readiness of the Roman population just as the barbarians approached the gates, the wildfire spread of environmentalism around the globe is tearing down the last ramparts of capitalism, leaving the walls undefended against the onslaught of socialism and worse.

In support of Doug's thesis, I think it's safe to say that only the least-attentive dear readers would fail to recognize the fundamental truth that extreme environmentalism is as accepted as doctrine by the masses. In fact, you'd have to have been hiding in a dark cave for decades to not have noticed the widespread propaganda campaigns permeating virtually every corner of society, most importantly school curricula, to the point where it is accepted by the majority as fact that the global environment is teetering towards collapse. Leading to the further belief that only purposeful government intervention will save the oceans, prevent warming, save the polar bears, honeybees, stop hurricanes, etc., etc., etc.

Further proof that the religion of environmentalism has been widely adopted comes from the fact that even the Tea Party now has affiliated green organizations.

To use a personal example, thanks to daily doses of indoctrination in her school, a friend of my 14-year-old daughter openly frets about global overpopulation. While it was largely an exercise in futility, I tried to ease her mind by pointing out that I've travelled to almost every corner of the globe and, with the exceptions of the big cities where people voluntarily cluster to pursue economic advantages, the world is pretty much deserted. If you doubt that statement, just drive 20 minutes or so outside of London or Paris—the capitals of countries that have been populated for millennia—and you'll find yourself in rural countryside.

Or, consider New York City and its densely populated environs. Drive just 15 miles from the dead centre of Manhattan and you'll be dodging deer (the state ranks 18^th in the nation for deer collisions).

But I drift, because what I really wanted to get to is the notion that environmentalism is like a deadly toxin to capitalism and, by extension, economic success. Or, viewed conversely, per Doug's thesis, why its endemic spread ensures dark days ahead for many of the world's largest (and not so large) economies.

Let's start by breaking environmentalism down into its working assumptions.

1. The presence of mankind is bad for the environment. Yet, despite all the arm-waving, the notion that humans cause global warming or whatever on a grand scale is not scientifically supported. A scientist friend at the very apex of the climatology pyramid once told me that termite farts had, by an order of magnitude, more impact on the environment than humankind.

2. Growth in the human population is bad. This attitude along with the downward trend in personal wealth is a big contributor to the trend for smaller and smaller families. To the point where a number of countries, Japan most notably, have literally entered a population death spiral, with more deaths than births. The economic consequences are as profound as they are dire, given that the trend means a smaller and smaller ratio of workers to retirees. Given the growth in socialism, the remaining workers will increasingly be made tax slaves of the state.

3. Industry and business are evil. Who's most responsible for all the toxic gases and seagull-choking plastic bags bringing the new/old god Mother Gaia weeping to her knees? Why, greed-maddened capitalist industry, of course! Remarkably, despite the obvious flaws with this meme—for starters, that it's industry that provides jobs, not to mention all of the goods that people require to avoid returning to the dark ages, literally—it has gained solid footing around the world.
Though I could retrieve any number of examples of how deep this idea runs, I'll use one that I know is near and dear even to the hearts of many of our own dear readers, because I hear it come up time and again as a great fear. And that has to do with genetically modified organisms (GMOs), especially GMO foods.
There may be a few good reasons to be concerned by GMO technologies, for example, the idea that a company can patent common crops or that the use of GMO technologies will lead to the growth of a monoculture that is then at risk of an unforeseen pestilence. Yet hard science shows no material difference in the nutritional value of GMO foods and those of the more natural sort. And though many decry the fact that plants have been engineered to be more resistant to pesticides, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because in many cases this allows for the use of less, not more, pesticides.
Regardless, that may be a moot point. In his excellent presentation at our recent Tucson Summit, Alex Daley pointed to a compelling investment opportunity, a company selling automated, driverless farm equipment that in addition to harvesting crops can hit individual weeds with small spurts of spray, greatly reducing the need for (and cost of) widespread spraying.
But the greatest defence of GMO technology is in the increased productivity of agricultural land—productivity that, as the chart below demonstrates, has greatly contributed to the disappearance of widespread famine. Note the rise in population versus the decline in famine deaths, and you'll be noting a waterfall decline in global famine. For the record, GMOs first hit the market in 1994.

Of course, if one accepts the idea—as the environmentalists most certainly do—that humankind is bad, then it is only logical for them to pressure governments to prohibit technologies that reduce mass starvation. And so it is that a number of countries, especially in Europe, have done just that by banning GMO crops or food made of those crops. Just last month, members of the Los Angeles city council proposed a ban on all GMO food.
There's a very close corollary to the ban on DDT in the early 1970s, largely because of Rachel Carson's scientifically flawed book, Silent Spring, that subsequently has cost literally tens of millions of lives due to the pandemic of malaria and other insect-spread diseases. And how many lives were saved by the ban? According to any credible scientist, not a one.

4. Therefore, industry and business must be closely regulated. I think it's safe to say that something approximating a majority of people in this world, especially those who are younger and therefore have been subjected to the full radiation of irrational environmentalism by state school systems, would vote in a heartbeat for the government to regulate industries to the point of control, something approximating a de facto reality in the US at this point.
In addition to ignoring the invariable consequences of government controlling the levers of production—i.e., economic collapse—the historical record shows unequivocally that the local environment has been damaged most in command economies.
That's because in a free economy, industry can't force people to buy products but must depend on word of mouth and goodwill to attract buyers. Thus, these businesses have a clear and compelling interest in being good neighbours. This is triply true in the Internet age, when every real or imagined transgression is immediately broadly broadcast. By contrast, in a command economy, bureaucrats with no shareholders to answer to are free to be as inefficient and wasteful as they please: all that matters is meeting production targets.

5. Anything other than "renewables" is bad. Despite providing the bulk of base energy production, coal, oil, and nuclear power are considered by the greenies as fundamentally loathsome. While there was a brief period when clean-burning natural gas was considered in a somewhat neutral light, it didn't take long for the environmentalists to figure out a way to hate it, too.
Again, given a binding vote on the matter, there's little question that a large share of the global population would vote to ban coal, oil, nuclear, and gas power pretty much immediately. Despite the reality that shortly thereafter, the lights would weakly flicker, then go out.
That point is made clear in the following slide-out of the just-released World Energy Outlook report issued by the International Energy Agency.

6. By extension, anything other than renewable energy should be blocked at every turn, and taxed excessively if it can't be blocked. This particular view gains strength in that it syncs up nicely with the political-correctness movement. To wit, it's very much politically incorrect to speak out in favour of a new fossil fuel project or, heavens forbid, a new nuclear plant. Doing so will instantly bring down upon your head a wave of indignant greenies. Thus, even as the struggling global economy is in desperate need of inexpensive energy, the legal, legislative, and economic challenges to bring new projects to market is made nearly impossible by lawyered-up nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and bureaucrats indoctrinated to be entirely sympathetic to their cause.
Of course, as our own Bud Conrad or any economist worth his or her salt will tell you, inexpensive energy is essential for robust economic growth. To state a fairly obvious example of the truth of that statement, back in the day when it took the energy of an ox working with a human to plough a field, the size of the global economy was a fraction of what it is today, and the cost of food as a percentage of income was exponentially higher than it is now.
But at this point, the religion of environmentalism is so entrenched that considering an alternative view, no matter how scientifically sound, is no more likely than an Arkansas Bible-thumper considering becoming a disciple of Muhammad.
While I may have previously run these photos underscoring the hypocrisy, or more likely, the complete cluelessness of rabid environmentalists (in this case, anti-fracking protesters in England), they are so telling I simply have to run them again, with full credit to the award-winning (science-based) website, Watts Up With That?

Here's the full article.

There are additional counterproductive planks in the environmentalist platform one could point to, but as other tasks left undone by the revelries around here are in need of attention, I'll inch toward something approximating a conclusion.

Some Conclusions

If you review the above tenets of the disciples of Greenism and accept them as accurate, the logical consequence is a strong, continuing trend toward greater control over the economy "for the good of the people." The United States and much of Europe can now be defined as largely socialist states, but should things continue on the current path, I suspect we'll see experiments in extreme socialism and, when those fail, communism.

That's because there's no room in the gabled halls of Greendom for capitalism, the driving force behind all successful economies and the subsequent advancement of humankind.

This despite the fact that previous experiments with communism have been, without exception, epic failures.

But we humans are stubborn when it comes to the notion that with just a little jiggering on the part of governments, we can somehow have our cake and then help ourselves to the next fellow's as well. That the cake today is baked with all natural, organic, recycled, gluten-free ingredients (and, heavens forbid, no trans fats) is only to the better.

Of course, it's the evil capitalists and their employees who will have to bear the brunt of the growing list of misguided green regulations and the society-wide consequences of those regulations. There is now even a serious movement to award every citizen a basic income each month for life, no strings attached. Nice work, if you can get it. As for who's going to pay for it, if you have a business or a job, then look no further than in the nearest mirror.

As the burden grows too heavy, businesses will shutter and/or move to saner business climates.

In conclusion, I think that Doug's right that the reasons for the eventual fall of the large Western empires will be mostly internal, not external, in nature. When all is said and done, it won't be some mad jihadist triggering a mega-bomb that brings down the West, but rather the consequences of the mass delusion of imminent environmental destruction, inculcated by those in control of the state as part and parcel of assuming even greater power.

It is unlikely to end well.

Doug Casey is a bestselling financial author, international investor, entrepreneur, and the founder and chairman of Casey Research, a provider of subscription financial analysis about specific market verticals including natural resources/metals/mining, energy, commodities, and technology. Since 1979 he has written or co-written the monthly metals-and-mining-focused investment newsletter The International Speculator. He also contributes to other newsletters including The Casey Report, a geopolitically-oriented publication.

David Galland is Managing Director of Casey Research,, and the Executive Director of the Explorers' League.

This post first appeared at the Casey Daily Dispatch.

The Victorian Bushfires: How Environmentalism Leads to Disaster

After the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which killed 209 people, Ben O’Neill (right) wrote this piece for the Mises Daily, where it first appeared. Nothing he describes has changed since, either politically or environmentally.

On February 7, 2009, and in the week that followed, bushfires ignited across Victoria, in Australia.[1] The fires raged through many towns, destroying at least 1,834 homes,[2] and killing at least 209 people,[3]more fatalities than any bushfire in Australian history.[4]

Let's compare: in the 1983 "Ash Wednesday" bushfires, seventy-five people died; in the 1939 "Black Friday" bushfires, seventy-one died; in all previous bushfires in Australia, back to data on bushfires in the 17th century, there were a total of 642 fatalities.[5] In short, Australia has just experienced what is far and away the most devastating bushfire in its history.

While the immediate causes of the various bushfires are thought to include arson, discarded cigarette butts, faulty power lines, or lightning strikes, these initial fires transformed into huge infernos and spread uncontrollably across Victoria only because of extremely high fuel loads throughout the state's bushland. The reason? For years, local governments have neglected to manage fire hazards on their land in order to be faithful to the principles of environmentalism — a philosophy that contends that nature has intrinsic value that must be preserved, regardless of any use it has to man.[6] The result has been that people have sacrificed their prosperity and even survival in an attempt to preserve the unspoiled sanctity of nature.

In the case of land management, environmentalists have invoked the alleged intrinsic value of nature to oppose the controlled burning of bushland, the clearing of vegetation and the prevention of excessive fire hazards in government-controlled land and adjacent private property. They have lobbied governments to prohibit the clearing of trees and shrubs and have been eternally hostile to all attempts to reduce the "bounty of nature" that has stoked the deadly fires that have spread across Victoria.

How Environmentalism Contributed to the Bushfires

Under the influence of the philosophy of environmentalism, as well as political pressure from environmentalist groups and an "environmentally conscious" electorate, local councils have refused for years to clear the vegetation that has now served as fuel for lethal infernos. The modus operandi of these bureaucrats and their ecosupporters has been to insist on "rigorous" environmental assessments, which in envirospeak means, assessments that continue until reasons have been found to prevent any interference with the natural state of public land. In addition to perpetually stalling any clearing of trees or vegetation, government councils have also prohibited people from clearing trees and vegetation from their own property, aggressively pursuing those who break environmental-protection laws that place the "welfare" of trees above the property rights and safety of people.

In 2002, Liam Sheahan, a resident of Reedy Creek in Victoria, was prosecuted for disregarding local laws and bulldozing approximately 250 trees on his own property to make a fire break next to his home.[7] Council laws prohibited Mr. Sheahan from clearing trees further than six meters away from his house, but he went ahead with his decision to create a 100 meter fire break. During the resulting prosecution, bushfire expert Dr. Kevin Tolhurst testified on Mr. Sheahan's behalf, telling the court that the clearing had reduced the fire risk to Mr. Sheahan's home from extreme to moderate. According to Mr. Sheahan, "The council stood up in court and made us to look like the worst, wanton environmental vandals on the earth. We've got thousands of trees on our property. We cleared about 247." Mr. Sheahan's prosecution cost him $100,000 in fines and legal fees, but when the bushfires swept through his town in February 2009, his actions were vindicated — his home was the only property left standing in a two-kilometer area, while neighboring properties were destroyed. His disregard for environmental laws saved his home and the lives of his family.

Warwick Spooner was not so lucky. His mother and brother were killed as the bushfires consumed their home in Strathewen in Victoria.[8] He was in no doubt as to why the tragedy had occurred, telling the Nillumbik council, "We've lost two people in my family because you dickheads won't cut trees down.… We wanted trees cut down on the side of the road, … and you can't even cut the grass for God's sake."[9] He was not the only one to express such frustrations, with another resident complaining to the council that her repeated requests to reduce vegetation growth on public land had been ignored.

In 2003, bushfire experts Rod Incoll and David Packham argued against planning regulations proposed to the council by environmentalist groups. These regulations, which were passed by the council, included restrictions against the removal of vegetation "and worse still, the requirement for planting vegetation around and almost over houses, as part of any planning permit to build a house in the shire of Nillumbik, so it gave the appearance from the outside of being a forest."[10]

Two weeks before the bushfires, Mr. Packham alerted Victorian residents to the critical fire conditions in the Victorian bush, warning them that bushfires could destroy between 1,000 and 2,000 homes and kill 100 people.[11] This frightening prediction may have sounded alarmist until hundreds were burned to death weeks later. During the fires, Mr. Packham followed up his predictions with an explanation of the carnage. He explained that fuel levels in public land had been allowed to reach dangerous levels due to environmentalist hostility to vegetation removal and controlled burning.

It has been a difficult lesson for me to accept that despite the severe damage to our forests and even a fatal fire in our nation's capital [the Canberra bushfires in 2003], the political decision has been to do nothing that will change the extreme threat to which our forests and rural lands are exposed.… It is hard for me to see this perversion of public policy and to accept that the folk of the bush have lost their battle to live a safe life in a cared-for rural and forest environment, all because of the environmental fantasies of outraged extremists and latte conservationists.[12]

Mr. Packham later branded environmentalists as "eco-terrorists waging a jihad" against prescribed burning, explaining that "[t]he green movement is directly responsible for the severity of these fires through their opposition to prescribed burning."[13]

As these incidents make clear, the negligent and authoritarian actions of local councils have contributed substantially to the severity of the Victorian bushfires. But they are the predictable consequence of a political atmosphere saturated with environmentalist philosophy, environmentalist lobby groups, and an electorate that views the Green party (Australia's third-largest political party) as a benign protest vote, ideal for showing their disaffection with the major political parties. Under such pressure, local councils are faithfully implementing the philosophy of environmentalism, which requires them to reduce humanity's "footprint" on nature, and tells them that the inherent value of non-conscious entities like trees and shrubs is more important than the desires of those rapacious human beings who plunder nature for their own selfish gain.

Response to The Bushfires by Government and Environmentalist Groups

Having failed to achieve damage control in the bushfires through proper land management, the response from government officials has been a predictable game of public-relations damage control. Councils have responded to fierce criticism of their aversion to land clearance and controlled burning with promises that they will reassess their planning and environmental policies. Such promises would sound more genuine if not for the fact that problems of insufficient fuel reduction and controlled burning on public land have been well known for decades. These problems having been highlighted extensively in previous bushfire inquiries, which are a recurring event in a country as prone to bushfires as Australia.[14] For Warwick Spooner, this latest promise of review was little comfort. He told Nillumbik Mayor Bo Bendtsen, "It's too late now mate. We've lost families, we've lost people."[15]

Any attempts to increase land clearing and controlled burning to prevent bushfire damage may also face greater constraints from federal environmental laws in the near future. The Department of Environment confirmed that they have received a public submission calling for controlled burning to be listed under federal law as a "key threatening process,"[16] defined as a process that "threatens, or may threaten, the survival, abundance or evolutionary development of a native species or ecological community."[17] Listing would require the minister to consider a threat-abatement plan for controlled burning, to find the most "feasible, effective and efficient way to abate the process."[18] Already listed as a key threatening process is land clearance, including "clearance of native vegetation for crops, improved, [sic] pasture, plantations, gardens, houses, mines, buildings and roads."[19]

Meanwhile, there is no sign of any self-examination by environmentalist groups. Rather than reconsider their cherished environmental-preservation laws, which have helped fuel the fires, environmentalists have taken the bushfires as an opportunity to selectively find evidence of human-induced global warming.[20]

Proponents of this theory have been eagerly pointing out that the bushfires occurred during a heat wave across southeast Australia that has caused record-high temperatures during the summer.

Referring to Australia's especially hot weather in the last twelve years, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong assured the public that "[a]ll of this is consistent with climate change, and all of this is consistent with what scientists told us would happen."[21] For obvious reasons, she did not comment on whether the simultaneous record low temperatures in other parts of the world — such as the United States,[22],[23] Canada,[24] England,[25] France, Italy, Germany,[26] and India[27] — are also "what scientists told us would happen."

Rather than simply removing coercive restrictions that have prevented private landowners from clearing trees on their own property, the government is set to respond to the bushfires by imposing new coercive restrictions. This time, private landowners will be prevented from having trees too close to their property.[28] Thus, having already seized sole power to remove trees and vegetation on private property (on the assumption that property owners are too evil or stupid to be trusted with these decisions) and having thereby forced Victorian residents into a disastrous inferno through their previous regulations, the government is convinced that it is the proper decision-making body to decide when property owners can plant trees.

While this kind of thinking demonstrates the government's boundless arrogance and insatiable desire for control, the danger posed to human life from public-land mismanagement runs much deeper than the specific environmental laws and policies currently in place, or even the laws to come. The root of the problem is the philosophy of environmentalism, which permeates all land-management decisions, guaranteeing hostility to any attempts to interfere with "the balance of nature." Despite having the legal power to undertake controlled burning on its land, the Yarra Ranges Shire in Victoria refused to do this for years before it was hit by the bushfires, instead calling for "rigorous" environmental assessments to determine the breeding seasons of local flora and fauna and the effect on endangered Leadbeater's possums.[29] So long as such considerations remain above concern for human life and liberty, there is little prospect of reducing the impact of natural disasters.

How Private Land Ownership Would Reduce Bushfire Risk

Because private ownership entails the right to control one's own property, and because some people may not wish to sacrifice their lives to prevent interference with local possums, environmentalists seek to achieve their goals through government ownership of land — land socialism. In this endeavor, they have been very successful. State forests, national parks, and other Crown land in Victoria make up approximately one third of the state but contributed four-fifths of the February 2009 bushfires.[30] And as with all examples of land socialism, the situation in Victoria has created an incentive structure that has destroyed accountability, thereby exacerbating the disaster.

As mere caretakers of public land, bureaucrats and local politicians are not liable for any loss caused by their mismanagement. Nor do they have any personal stake in its capital value. When property is destroyed due to their ineptitude and their enslavement to the philosophy of environmentalism, their savings are not in danger. If anyone is required to pay for compensation, it is taxpayers who have had nothing to do with the whole mess. For the local councilor or the state or federal politician, what matters is getting the green vote, showing how "environmentally conscious" they are, and placating all those green lobby groups and media darlings that might say nasty things about them if they don't toe the line.

Had the bushland areas in Victoria been private property, the owner of the land would be subject to a duty of care to his neighbors under tort laws and would be liable for any damage caused to his neighbors' properties by his own negligence. He certainly would not be able to claim as a defense the fact that his own environmental policies make it difficult for him clear vegetation or conduct controlled burning. And as a result, he would have a strong incentive to ensure that the land is properly managed, neither plundered of vegetation to the point that it loses its capital value, nor allowed to overgrow into a dangerous fire hazard.

Had these bushland areas been regarded as unowned land, ripe for homesteading, then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear fire breaks to their hearts' content, homesteading as much land as necessary for a safe buffer between themselves and the bushlands beyond.

Had the areas of private property adjacent to these bushlands been treated as genuine private property — unconstrained by coercive regulation — then adjacent property owners would have been able to clear trees and vegetation on their own land, and build facilities to cope with bushfires, without groveling for permission from their political masters. They would not have been inhibited by mountains of regulations and armies of bureaucrats who frustrated their attempts at safety. They certainly would not have been prohibited from clearing vegetation before the fire has burned them out and then prohibited from planting trees after the damage had already been done.

The danger of bushfires and other natural disasters is ever present, but it is not a danger that we must accept passively as an immutable act of nature. It is a danger that can be managed or exacerbated. And it is a danger that is currently exacerbated by the philosophy of environmentalism and the land socialism that is used to implement this philosophy. In describing the California bushfires in 2003, Lew Rockwell diagnoses the problem:

What went wrong? The problem is in the theory of environmentalism. Under it, ownership is the enemy. Nature is an end in itself. So it must be owned publicly, that is, by the state. The state, in its management of this land, must not do anything to it. There must not be controlled burning, brush clearing, clear cutting, or even tourism. We can admire it from afar, but the work of human hands must never intervene.
    Then the brush begins to gather. It piles higher and higher. Old growth rots. Uncontrolled growing leads to crowding. When the weather gets hot the stuff combusts. Then the winds blow and the fires spread. It's been the same story for several decades now, ever since the loony theory that nature should be left alone took hold.[31]

So long as governments remain under the sway of environmentalist philosophy and arrogate massive tracts of land to their own inept control, no amount of legal tinkering will prevent the next bushfire. How many more will die then?

Ben O'Neill is a lecturer in statistics at the University of New South Wales (ADFA) in Canberra, Australia. He has formerly practiced as a lawyer and as a political adviser in Canberra. He is a Templeton Fellow at the Independent Institute.

Notes
[1] The temperature in Melbourne reached 46.4°C (115.5°F), the highest temperature since records began 150 years ago. Other cities across Victoria also reached record temperatures. See Townsend, H. "City swelters, records tumble in heat," The Age, February 7, 2009.
[2] "Fair trial for accused arsonist," SBS World News Australia, February 14, 2009.
[3] "Victoria bushfire toll rises to 209," The Australian, February 20, 2009.
[4] Huxley, J. "Horrific, but not the worst we've suffered," Sydney Morning Herald, February 11, 2009.
[5] Ibid, Huxley (2009)
[6] See Berliner, M.S. (2007) "Against Environmentalism," Ayn Rand Institute.
[7] Baker, R. and McKensie, M. "Fined for illegal clearing, family now feel vindicated," The Age, February 12, 2009.
[8] Petrie, A. "Angry survivors blame council 'green' policy," The Age, February 11, 2009.
[9] Ibid, Petrie (2009).
[10] "Council ignored warning over trees before Victoria bushfires," The Australian, February 11, 2009
[11] Packham, D. "Victoria bushfires stoked by green vote," The Australian, February 10, 2009.
[12] Ibid, Packham (2009).
[13] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[14] Less than six years prior to the Victoria bushfires, the McLeod Inquiry, which investigated the 2003 bushfires in Canberra, Australia, found that management of fuel loads in public forests was lacking. This finding was echoed in the subsequent coroner's report on the fires in 2006, which found that the ACT government had failed to follow recommendations for a rigorous back-burning process, and this resulted in heavy fuel loads, which fueled the fires. See Doogan, M. The Canberra Firestorm. ACT Coroner's Report, December 19, 2006, pp. 65–70.
[15] Ibid, Petrie (2009).
[16] Ryan, S. "Burnoffs following Victoria bushfires a 'threat to biodiversity'," The Australian, February 12, 2009.
[17] Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth), s 188(3).
[18] Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
[19] Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
[20] This is a familiar pattern. For discussion of global-warming claims during the 2007 California fires, see Anderson, W. "Fires of the Feds: How the Government has Destroyed Forests," Mises Daily, October 25, 2007.
[21] "Heatwave a sign of climate change: Wong," ABC News, January 29, 2009.
[22] Gunter, L. "Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age," National Post, February 25, 2008.
[23] Evans, C. "Baby, it's cold outside," Daily Camera, January 6, 2009.
[24] Cold weather records shattered in 6 Manitoba towns. CBC News, January 13, 2009.
[25] Record cold weather payouts triggered as temperature hits -11C. Times Online, January 6, 2009.
[26] Donahue, P. and Viscusi, G. "Central Europe, France, U.K., Italy Hit by Cold Air," Bloomberg, January 6, 2009.
[27] "Poor burn books to stay warm in chilly India, 55 dead," Reuters India, January 5, 2009.
[28] Rolfe, P. "Building standards to be lifted," The Herald Sun, February 15, 2009.
[29] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[30] Ibid, Ryan (2009).
[31] Rockwell Jr, L.H. "Land Socialism: Playing with Fire," Mises Daily, October 24, 2007